More Stitching

Another finish from a couple of days ago. This piece is destined to be part of a larger wallhanging being created as a group project with many other stitchers. It should all be finished by the beginning of June, so hopefully I will be able to share pictures of the finished piece then.




This is based on mini-kit called Lone Fisherman from Permin, however I've messed with it quite a lot. Removed the fisherman, extended the design to fit a larger square, reversed it and, most obviously, coloured it. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out in the end.

I actually have the kit and two others (Country Lane and Off the Rocks) which I plan on stitching from the kits and then making up into something with a bit of patchwork. At the moment I'm leaning towards making each one the centre of a small log cabin block and then either stitching them all together bellpull style, or making them into individual mini pillows.

As promised

A post not about Ewok's toilet training.

I have actually managed to do a little stitching over the past few weeks and here's the results. It's from the 2002 JCS Ornament Issue and I had a kit for making it from a friend who was clearing out her stash, so it seemed rude not to stitch it. The design is Abigail's Christmas Ornament by Earth Threads

Just the stitching (sorry for slight blurriness, it's a scan and the beads were already on)



Finished as a tuck pillow, the little pillow was part of the kit.

With hindsight I probably should have subbed out the pink thread for something else, but I was just looking for a quick, easy stitch that didn't involve digging through my thread and project boxes for threads, and trying to select a fabric from my extensive collection.

Yesterday in photos

S.E.X. in the morning...





Toddler + sharpie marker in the evening *sigh*

Nogard's Armoury

So, as promised, here's the other dice bag I stitched. This one was for the newest member of our group, A, and someone who's new to D&D as well. She only got her first set of dice for Christmas, so of course she needed a fancy new dice bag in which to store them.

After discussions with the rest of the group I decided to base the design of her bag around her character, which would be strange if it wasn't her very first character. So long after she's gone to the great dice bag in the sky A will still have the bag to remember her by.

The character's name is Nogard and she's a paladin. So playing on the fact that the dice are most often used for combat rolls in D&D, the dice bag became Nogard's Armoury, with a sword, a shield and a set of dice decorating the four sides.



Here's what it looked like before being en-bagged...

Sides:



Base:



The fabric for this one was Sparklies Summer Skies Belfast Linen, and the colour in the 'flat' pictures is much closer to reality than my rubbish photographs.

Covered in Bees!

Finally I can share my two latest stitching finishes. They were both gifts for people who may have stumbled across my blog and so I couldn't share until they'd been gifted, which happened this last weekend.

They are both dice bags for members of my D&D roleplaying group (yes I'm 30-mmmph and I still play D&D).

The first one was for a friend who loves Eddie Izzard and quotes lines on a regular basis, however the one we hear the most in our gaming sessions is 'Covered in Bees!' from his Beekeeper sketch. So of course when I needed a design for his dice bag, well it had to be covered in bees.

I pinched a little bee motif from an Anchor Winnie the Pooh design and repeated it 34 times over the area to be stitched (I was sick of stitching that bloody bee by the end of it!) and here's the result:



Here's what the stitching looked like before it was made up into the bag...

Sides:



Bottom:



It's stitched on Sparklies Sunlit Forest Belfast Linen.

I can report that the recipient was well chuffed with his new dice bag, and repeated 'Covered in bees!' even more than usual during our Sunday gaming session *lol*

Tomorrow I'll post Nogard's Armoury...

Another stitching finish

I actually finished the stitching on this some time ago, and had it made up and in use, but I didn't consider it properly finished because it still lacked the button in the middle.

A few days ago I braved the nearest town for some last minute Christmas shopping, and because I needed to visit the excellent haberdashery shop in town. It's a great shop, a true haberdashers in the old style. I went in because I needed cotton thread, cord and cord locks for a drawstring bag I was making and they had everything I needed. While I was there I looked through their massive array of buttons and finally settled on one to finish this project off. Actually I bought two buttons but I had a feeling that one of them would be too big, and it was.

So, finally finished finished, my Tribal Sun Biscornu:

Top view:



Side view to show the beaded edge:



The fabric is Sparklies Fire 32 count Lugana (Murano) and the design is Tribal Sun, a Sparklies freebie.

I have also stitched this design to be the cover of a needlecase, and over one for a scissor fob, but neither of them are properly finished yet, so pictures of them will have to wait.

Ornament Exchange Part II

Yesterday morning my ornament arrived by special delivery all the way from the wilds of Scotland:



It was made by Paula, and she knows me well. The design is from Dragon Dreams and is called Santa's Christmas Surprise, and although you can't see it in the picture, the backing fabric is a gorgeous dusky purple silk.

I will definitely be participating in more ornament exchanges in the future.

At last, some stitching to share

I have been stitching quite a bit, but I kept changing from one project to another for various reasons, meaning I didn't have any finishes to share, but now I do.

This year, for the first time ever, I joined in an ornament exchange being held on one of the forums I frequent.

I've never made an ornament before and I wanted to make a good impression, so I chose something I thought would be quite simple to make, a cube, and decided to stitch snowflakes on each side except one which would have initials and the year on it.

Of course this 'simple' idea turned into a much more involved task than I thought.

First off I needed some snowflake patterns and unlike some of my Google adventures, this one yielded results on my very first click, with The Floss Box. In fact I was spoilt for choice, but I managed to narrow it down to five designs that were all about the same size, and sufficiently different. Of course then I had another problem, after all I didn't want the finished cube to be huge and all those designs are about 40-60 stitches across. That's when things got a little crazy as I decided they would be stitched over one. Now I'm no stranger to stitching over one, but always before it's been solidly stitched designs and I've used tent stitch, but that wasn't going to work for these designs, so this would be my first experience actually cross stitching over one, and to a deadline to boot!

The fabric choice was easy, my partner was Linsday and I know her tastes very well, so I chose a dark purple fabric (Sparklies Basically Bonkers) on which I knew the white snowflakes would stand out well. I found that once I got into the swing of stitching over one properly, that it actually stitched up quite quickly and I soon had all the sides ready for construction. Fortunately it wasn't my first time out making up, having made a few biscornu in the past. I wanted to bead the edges as I was stitching them together, but didn't want to overpower the stitching, so I used petite seed beads, one on every stitch, which gave a lovely delicate line of beading. I used a oily finish clear bead (MH40161) and a purply/blue bead (MH40252) alternating between the two.

Finally I added some crystal bead drops to each of the points except the top one, where I put the hanging loop. For the drops and loop I used MH00161 and various shapes of Swarovski AB beads, bicones, rounds and droplets. I had all of these in my stash as I used to make jewellery before Ewok came along.

Now if you managed to make it this far through the rambling explanation you deserve some pictures, so here you are.

First off I scanned the stitching before I made the ornament:














And a couple of pictures of the finished ornament front and back.



Those last two pictures are a little washed out because I had to use the flash. Linsday has some more photos on her blog which show the colours a bit better.

I have to say I was very pleased with the finished ornament, although I was a little worried that I may have gone a bit over the top, but hey, it's Christmas.

Fabric Sale

I've decided to sell off some of my personal stash of hand-dyed fabrics from Sugar Maple Fabrics. I've realised that I'll probably never use most of them now I dye my own, and I can't just hang on to them forever.

I've put piccies and details of all the pieces I'm selling on this webpage.

Postage is free to the UK and at cost everywhere else. Payment by Paypal please. If you want to buy, or find out how much postage would be, please email me on smfsale@sparklies.co.uk.

I am keeping a few pieces, I couldn't bear to part with some of them, and there were a few pieces already earmarked for specific projects. It also helps to think of all the new stash I'll be able to buy with the proceeds *grin*

A WIP

A couple of weeks ago I started stitching Starburst by Loopylou Designs:


Click for a bigger version

This is the top section of the design, and I still have to put in some mosaic stitches and then cut and weave all the hardanger.

I'm stitching it all in white on a piece of my Sparkling Purpleberry Spludge 28 count Cashel, and I have to say I'm very pleased with how it's looking so far.

The advantages of a big house

In the comments of my last post, Karen asked how I was able to work with Ewok running about the place. The answer is simple: I don't have to watch him all the time.

It's taken a lot of time, and trial-and-error, to get the house laid out in such a way that I can leave him unsupervised in two areas of the house while I work. The first area is the living/dining room. This is two sizeable rooms joined by a large archway. The living room part is 23'x13' and the dining room part is 11'x10'. This has allowed us to set it up so that my 'office' is at one end of the living room, behind the sofa, and then we have a large dining table in the dining room, which is where I cut and serge the fabrics. Nothing in either of these rooms is within Ewok's grasp (well that's the theory anyway, it doesn't always work out that way) so I can work at the computer, or chopping and stitching fabrics while he plays in the main part of the living room.

Of course he pesters me from time to time and is usually far more interested in my antics than those of Pocoyo, or the Tweenies, and occasionally he'll be very naughty and warrant a telling-off, but for the most part this arrangement works.

Finding a way of doing the actual dyeing with him about was a little more tricky, but we sussed it in the end. The utility room, where I do my dyeing, is in the basement (which is more of a lower ground floor than an actual basement, the house is built into a hill), and the room itself is tiny. Of course I couldn't have Ewok in the room with the dyes anyway, it's too dangerous for him in oh so many ways. However the basement has a large hallway (about 13' square max), off which all the rooms lead, and with the application of three baby gates we were able to fence off the central part of the hallway as a playroom for him. So while I'm dyeing, he can play safely in the hallway, and I'm just a door away. Dyeing goes in bursts of activity with frequent 5 or 10 min breaks, and I spend these breaks playing with Ewok, so he never has to amuse himself for more than about 30 mins at a time, usually a lot less, and if he needs me I'm right there.

Finally, I usually have 2 hours each afternoon while he naps, and 3 to 4 hours after he's gone to bed, before I crawl into my pit, and of course I get loads done then because there's less distractions.

It does mean that my 'me' time will have to be mostly sacrificed until the show, but I'm hoping it will be worth it, and I'm not giving it up completely. I'll still have an hour in the afternoons to stitch and watch tv, although even then I'm working, as the piece I'm stitching at the moment is on one of my fabrics and I'd love to have it finished in time for the show as a model.

I have no willpower

I mentioned in a previous post that once I'd finished a current stitching WIP that I'd be starting a new piece from Victoria Sampler, specifically Sweet Pea Gazebo. Well I haven't finished the WIP, but I've started SPG anyway.

I did put a few more stitches into my WIP first, but then deicided I didn't have the drive to stitch on it at the moment. I also stitched a load of speciality stitch samples for a new product that I currently have in development, which I'm hoping to get into the shop in the next couple of weeks.

So back to SPG. I had a dig around in my kitted up folders and found that not only did I have the chart and silks pack but I had the Trebizond pack for it as well, which I'd forgotten about. I bought it all off a fellow stitcher several years ago, filed it away and then forgot about it. Anyway, this meant that all I needed to get going was some fabric, and to dig out a ball of #12 white Perle.

When I bought the fabric for HAS I got half a metre, just in case I messed up the hardanger section and needed to start over. I didn't and so I had a large piece of 28 count cream Quaker Cloth sitting around waiting to be used. I decided to cut off a length of it and dye it up to use for SPG. I dyed it a spotty mix of pale green, purple and pink, trying to give the impression of sweet peas, and I think it came out rather well. I need to try it out again on some Lugana, but if it works out I'll be adding the colour to the shop range, probably called Sweet Pea.

A stitching happy dance

For the last few weeks I've been madly stitching on Heirloom Anniversary Sampler from Victoria Sampler. The reason for this was Wookiee's Grandparents 60th Wedding Anniversary, which was last Saturday (14th June).

On the advice of Wookiee's Dad I made a few changes to the original design. Primarily these were to change all the hearts ('they're not hearts and flowers people') to diamonds, what with 60th being diamond and all that, including the big heart at the top, and I added the jessicas either side of the new big diamond to fill in the large space left. I also replaced all the silks with DMC colours, except for a couple that I had to dye myself, one because there was nothing close in DMC, and the other because it was an overdye anyway. Next all the heart beads and pearls were replaced with various swarovski crystals, and I used a large one in place of the flower in the middle of the hardanger. Finally I changed the verse to something more appropriate to the couple, and more suitable for a 60th.

Anyway, here's my finished piece:



If you click on the image it'll take you to my webshots album, where there are close up pictures of the top, middle and bottom of the sampler.

I finished it into a bellpull, but unfortunately the pictures of the finished piece didn't come out all that well. Next time we visit I'll try and get some pictures of it in situ.

Stitching on this has given me the yen to stitch more of these style of design, and I have Sweet Pea Gazebo in my stash with the thread pack to complete it, so I shall probably he hoicking that out to stitch once I've finished one other WIP, that I'll be getting back to now HAS is done.

Sale on Now

It's the anniversary of me opening my own shop online, so for today (12th March) everything is 10% off.

Shop, shop shop!

<== Clicky on the Sparklies linky in my sidebar over there to visit my shop.

S.E.X. Explained

Apologies to Meg and any of my other non-stitchy readers for not explaining.

S.E.X. stands for Stash Enhancement eXperience.

In other words, shopping for stitchy stuff, or craft stuff, or any other kind of stuff that you call stash, usually hobby related.

The term does afford much amusement in the stitchy community, allowing you to say such things as "I had S.E.X. with the postman this morning" without your OH starting divorce proceedings, well not on the grounds of adultery anyway. Possibly on the grounds of you having just spent all the housekeeping money on bits of cloth and string, and the sure and certain knowledge that he's (or she's) going to be eating baked beans on toast for dinner until the next paycheque comes through.

S.E.X. Party

As you may know, I dye fabrics and threads and try and sell them to poor unsuspecting cross stitchers. I also spend far too much time on various forums full of those same poor unsuspecting stitchers. On one of these forums is another lady (K) who operates a ONS, except that now she's having to give it up because life has given her one too many lemons recently.

A little while ago another forum member suggested holding a S.E.X. party at her house, where myself and this other lady would take along our stock and other stitchers would come and buy it. Think tupperware party for stitchers. That happened last Saturday and a great time was had by all.

I used some very underhanded tactics (I turned up with my stuff) and forced several people (at flosspoint) to buy my products. I also had a frolic through K's stock and succumbed to the lure of silk threads and a chart.

The threads in question are Gloriana silk floss, and they are oh-so-strokeable. She had all of them strung onto one of those metal rings, and at one point I was sat with it in my lap, just stroking it, I half expected it to start purring.

I was very restrained on the day and only bought 11 skeins of the silks, but I've since emailed her asking for another 20 skeins (if she has them). The ones I bought on the day are Twilight Blue, Midnight, Bell Flower, Periwinkle, Red Clay, Sage, Ollalieberry(2), Merry's Mauve, Pigeon and Winterwoods.

The chart I bought is Blackstone Fantasy Garden by Ink Circles. I've been contemplating this design for a while now, and was going to add it to my wishlist, but then it was there, right under my nose, and I just couldn't resist. My plan is to stitch the design using the Gloirana silks instead of the Carries Creations threads used in the original, hence the request for more skeins of the silks, I need more colours to choose from.

I've made more progress on the tits too. I finished the fifth one last night, so just one more to go and it's done.

Swap-Bot

I was recently introduced to this site when it was used to organise our stitching secret santa this year. The lady organising the SS used it because it automatically assigns partners for you, so even she didn't know who was sending to whom.

After our 'swap' had completed I decided to have a nosey around the site and see what other sorts of swaps were taking place. Well there's loads of them and I've been sucked into the whole experience.

Swap-Bot simply facilitates the process of setting up a swap that people (who meet the swap criteria) can join in. You can set up private swaps as well, the SS one was private.

In order to join in you need to register and set up an account and profile. The profile is where you put information about yourself, primarily interests, likes and dislikes. This is where your swap partners will look to get a feel for what to send you (within the confines of the swap). As an example I'm currently working on my item for a 'Handmade for you' swap. The parameters of the swap were to send one handmade item to one partner. As my thing is cross stitch that's how I'm making my item, having looked in my partners profile I discovered she likes small picture frames and her favourite colour is blue. So I'm making her a cross stitched photo frame in shades of blue.

I've also decided to have a stab at hosting a swap. This one is for sheets of papercrafting 'stickies', stickers, peel-offs, die cuts and rub-ons. Having bought a few bundles and TSV's from QVC I have loads of sheets of these that I'll never use because they're not to my taste. So the swap is to exchange two of these with each of two partners (so send out four sheets in total). It's an international swap and if your interested you can join in here: Stickies Swap.

Although the swap is restricted to people with a 4.5 rating, if you're new, signing up and you know me somehow (and I know you) then email me and let me know it's you before the sign up date and I won't block you. Or you could try and get in a couple of quick swaps before the closing date, you've got until the 31st Jan.

Catching up

Hope you all had a good holiday and a merry New Year.

We had a relatively quiet time. We spent Christmas day at home just us, it's my day to relax and have a wee drinky, so no driving to rellies, no entertaining and the big dinner is ready when it's ready, although this year I did make an effort (and succeeded) to have it ready in time for Ewok's normal teatime so we could all eat together.

Boxing Day is usually spent visiting with Wookiee's family, his grandparents in the morning, a couple of drinks with his Dad in the pub before lunch and then the rest of the day at his parents house. This year we had to change the venue because his parent's house just isn't big or uncluttered enough to contain a nosey, scrambling, 'la-la-la I can't hear you saying no', pestering smaall person, plus they have a small, very exciteable dog. So this year they came to us for tea. Fortunately 'tea' in this case is just a cold meal of ham, cheese and salad. They couldn't stay for long because they had to get back to the dog, she doesn't travel well and they don't like to leave her for more than about 3 hours at a time.

Ewok got some great presents but his favourites so far are a VTech Tiny Touch Phone, a Little Tykes DiscoverSounds Guitar, and a large stuffed teddy. The teddy has been the biggest surprise, he has a few stuffed toys but hasn't seemed crazy about any one of them, but teddy got taken to bed on Christmas Day night and every night since. Sometimes he gets shoved to the bottom of the bed and then once I checked on Ewok before going to bed myself, and he was cuddling teddy in his sleep *aww*

I was given loads of books from my Amazon wishlist and a book light to allow me to read in bed without disturbing Ewok in his cot. I also took part in a stitching Secret Santa exchange and my SS sent me a wonderful parcel with the chart for Mushroom Tabernacle Choir, a large piece of SMF Cabernet, three skeins of WDW thread, a beaded scissor fob and a lovely little dragon figurine.

In other news, I've had a new product promotion in Gift of Stitching, it was a lovely article with a great picture and they said very nice things about my fabric and threads. I've already had two orders as a direct result, fingers crossed there's more to come.

I'm also supposed to have a very small piece in the issue of The World of Cross Stitching that comes out on 14th Jan (on the Best Buys pages), and look out for me in a giveaway promotion in Cross Stitcher (the UK one) in the issue that comes out on 1st Feb, No 197. That's one where you can write in to try and win something.

Basically Bonkers

Here it is:

Approx DMC shades 208, 209 & 3807

Ok, so I promised you the tale behind the name a few weeks ago, as I was gently reminded by Karen in a comment recently.

Back in June a large group of stitchers, myself included, all got together for a stitchy weekend at some holiday cottages in Derbyshire (we'd booked the whole place). In the run up to the weekend people were offering to teach people various things and I offered to run a dyeing class for anyone who wanted to have a go.

Several people were interested, so along with all my stock (well I couldn't turn down a captive audience, could I!) I packed up all my dyeing paraphernalia.

We had a glorious weekend and early Sunday afternoon I set up a dyeing area in the small garden between the cottages, and those who wanted to play gathered around for the demo.

I started with dyeing threads, because these take the least amount of room, and once they're in the pots of dye they can be moved anywhere there's a flat surface. Next I moved on to fabric immersion dyeing, where the fabric is immersed either partially or totally in a pot of dye, usually scrunched up. These can also be moved away once they're soaking. Finally we laid out some fabrics for sponge dyeing, which one of the ladies described as 'like being back at nursery school again' as she wielded a dye laiden sponge in a rather alarming manner.

The result of all this inspired dyeing were some wonderful colour schemes, and I decided that several of them would do nicely as future colours for my collection. In honour of the ladies that had created them, I asked them to come up with the names for the colours.

One of these ladies is Joy, who is a frank speaking lady with a big personality (she's a love, and I'm pretty sure she'll read this and be in bits at me calling her a lady), and earlier in the weekend, during a rather mad conversation, I'd said to her; "You know, you're just basically bonkers!". Much hilarity ensued, and the nickname stuck.

The colour you see above was created by Joy in one of those happy accident moments. The fabric was originally dyed with a new colour, one that I'd not had chance to try out before that weekend, called Vivid Violet. It actually came out a very bright pinky purple, and Joy is not a fan of pink. So in an attempt to alter the colour to something more purple, we dyed it again, this time with a dark blue/purple dye and this was the result.

When I asked Joy to name this colour she had a bit of a dilemma. You see she already has a colour named after her, Buttercup Joy, created in response to her request for just such a colour. She'd also already named one of the other colours she created that weekend (she was quite prolific in her dyeing) after her daughter, so she was now a bit stuck for names.

Then in a flash of inspiration she said, "You can name it for me after all, just call it Basically Bonkers!"

A finish

I've finished my second (and more than likely my last) piece of stitching for the year. The design is a freebie called Coeur, one of many lovely designs I found on a blog I was sent to by a friend. The blogger is Ludivine, she's french and her posts are in french, but even if you can't read the posts (like me) I recommend you go and have a look at her designs, they're wonderful. To see only her posts with designs in, click on this link Grilles gratuites.

Anyway, here's my finished piece:

Click for a bigger image.

This is not my usual choice of design, but I was looking for something to be a showpiece for a new batch of thread colours that I'm releasing in the New Year. As they're all shades of pink and purple it seemed appropriate to do a Valentines related design and this one really appealed to me.

It's stitched using one of the new colours, called Hunnybunny (approx DMC 3608 and 3609), on my Fairy Tale fabric. Stitched over one, using two strands and tent/continental stitch rather than cross stitch. I find this works better for me when stitching over one.

As you may also guessed, this means I have the scanner back, so as soon as I can get the batch of fabric in the washer, ironed and dried, I'll tell all about Basically Bonkers.